Jonathan bares his fangs

After last week’s duel between President Goodluck Jonathan and the Nigeria Governors Forum, it seems unlikely that anyone would ever again dare to underrate the capacity of the President to take on his opponents or even doubt that he has come to his own. Not with the serial victories of the last fortnight starting with the one over his nemesis, Olusegun Obasanjo. Like a good learner, such has been the unaccustomed dexterity of the erstwhile godson that the structure inelegantly put together by his Baba has been taken down with barely audible whimpers. Like the Biblical quest, Jona’s lines are at the moment falling onto their right places!

Now, the anointing of Anthony Anenih as the chair of PDP Board of Trustees was supposed to be the icing on the presidential cake. The president obviously got a double in the long-awaited onslaught against the Nigerian Governors Forum – and by extension, the spat with the irrepressible Rivers Governor Rotimi Amaechi – which came within micro-seconds of the former.

Thanks to President Jonathan and his PDP Governors Forum, the nation has a lot to learn from the power arithmetic in which a part is deemed to be more than the sum of the whole. A PDP Governors Forum is after all, some steps to decapitation of the bigger body. The President may not have had the head of the chair of the NGF on a platter –John the Baptist-style, the journey to its internment is well on course. The trophy of the PDP governors’ forum is after, all as good any.

If we add last week’s judicial victory clearing the coast for candidate Jonathan in 2015, the momentum of unchallenged and unchallengeable power would seem infinite. We expect more of such victories – either procured or earned – even as the premature countdown to the 2015 polls begins in earnest. And as Governor Godswill Akpabio, the President’s Man Friday cared to remind last week, part of the sideshow is to fix the Judases and the traitors in the party. By then, the move to carve the PDP in the image of Goodluck Ebele Jonathan would have been near perfect – completed.

Not even for most part of the imperial Presidency of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, did we see him herd the club of governors to the Villa with the sole aim of choosing their leader for them. Of course we know why the Presidency would pay so much attention to a body it once charitably (?) described as an extra-constitutional body. One Presidential minion – Ahmed Gulak – actually described the body as a trade union. Earlier, Presidential godfather Edwin Clark had described it as an opposition movement perpetually in breaches of both the 1999 Constitution and the constitution of the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP).

The story goes all the way back to a minor incident in the Okrika waterfront in 2010. Nigerians would recall how a visiting Dame Patience Goodluck chided the elected governor of her home state over the latter’s use of “must” to convey his administration’s resolve to demolish and upgrade the blighted Okrika waterfront. The spectacle of the President’s spouse snatching the microphone from Amaechi and the equally dramatic putdown of the former with undisguised venom is one Nigerians are unlikely to forget: “I want you to get me clear. I am from here (Okrika). I know the problems of my people. So, I know what I am talking. I do not want us to go into crises….But what I am telling you is that you always say you must demolish. That word ‘must, you use is not good. It is by pleading. You appeal to the owners of the compound, because they will not go into exile. Land is a serious issue.”

Of course, Amaechi’s sins have since grown in leaps and bounds. His leadership of the NGF has been uncompromising in its opposition to the Federal Government’s expropriation of funds belonging to the states and local government to establish the Sovereign Wealth Fund. There is also the lingering matter of the excess crude account which the federal government sought to disburse as it pleased but which his leadership of the NGF would insist on contesting in court. The dispute between Bayelsa and Rivers over the status of some oil wells and which the Rivers Governor had openly accused the President of meddling in favour of his home state of Bayelsa merely added salt on a gaping wound.

Governance is however not the only area of disagreement. If the raging battle in Adamawa is a revelation of the extent to which the governors club is locked in combat with the President and the national chairman on just about every and any issue, the tension between the National Working Committee of the party and its executive council are as equally revealing of a party in turmoil.

However, just as much has been written about the struggle for the soul of the PDP as the 2015 race hots up as the driver of the animosities, there is another factor often glossed over. Psychoanalysing the President is certainly far from my mind. However, one only needs to go back to the travails of former Governor Timipre Sylva for an inkling into the character flaws of the number one citizen. I refer here to his intolerance of those perceived as remotely challenging his authority, plus his inability to overlook a hurt or forgive an injury. To these add his penchant to elevate personal issues to state matters and his lack of restraint in the use of state instruments to push a personal agenda.

Now, where do these lead? I make some guesses. Already, with two fixers in office, there shouldn’t be shortage of enemies to find and fix in the run down to 2015. It is futile to ask a man riding the crest of victory to slow down or dismount.

Not unexpectedly, the developments have come with interesting side shows. Just like in Sylva’s case in which an alleged insubordination would become the subject of a thriller at the Villa, Amaechi story is already being promoted in Jonathan’s court as a block buster in gubernatorial insolence! How about something to excite the bored presidency?

The point is – this presidency knows a bit or two about the use of power – in a perverse way. Gone are the days when presidents drew from the well-spring of moral authority to get things going. With President Jonathan, the seduction to raw power has become so irresistible as to constitute the barometer to measure the decline of the moral authority.

Sure enough, everyone is guaranteed to learn the unknown equation in power relations: the rule of unanticipated or unexpected behaviour. It’s something for the gloaters to ponder over.